30 Tips on Upgrading a Motherboard

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It happens to all of us eventually, the ExtremeTech staff probably more than most. Whether due to failure or obsolescence—or after you’ve run out of alternative upgrade paths—it comes time to pull a motherboard out of a working system and replace it with something different.

That’s a job. It requires you to pull all of your expansion cards, disconnect and work around all the cabling, wrest the big board from sometimes-tight quarters within a case, prep the new board, wiggle it into that possibly cramped quarter, and, when you think you’re all done, you still have to coax Windows through the trauma of waking up with new hardware.

We find the process daunting but fun—but then again, we’re almost disgustingly techy. If it’s less of a treat for you, we’ve got, well, a treat for you. In the following pages we share our very best hints on swapping out a motherboard, culled from years of experience and scores of system builds and upgrades.

Now, remember—this is a series of tips, not a step by step how-to. Don’t expect a full-on motherboard installation manual; instead, use the manual that comes with your motherboard, and use our tips to make the job even easier.

Also, we’re assuming you’re keeping your existing Windows installation in place. In general, it’s better to perform a fresh operating system install if you’re replacing your motherboard, but practical realities often prevent this. So we’ve got a number of tips that should help you prep your Windows installation for the switch, then bring it up properly.

Preparing Windows for the Inevitable Freak-outThe first step in motherboard replacement is to prepare the operating system, and since most of the world runs on Windows, we’ll concentrate on that. Before you even think about pulling the board out of the case:

Uninstall motherboard drivers. Anything you installed with the disc that came with your previous motherboard (or anything you downloaded specifically for that board) has to come out. You can do this easily through Add/Remove Programs (XP) or Uninstall a Program (Vista) in Control Panel.

Don’t forget, during your uninstallations, to remove drivers for onboard devices. If your motherboard contains, and you installed drivers for, an audio codec, a graphics subsystem, a Wi-Fi network interface, a wired Ethernet interface, or what have you, uninstall the drivers for them.

You may leave drivers for expansion cards in place, but you may have to reinstall them after the upgrade process. Graphics drivers are especially touchy.

This is a good time for general maintenance: Clean up the hard drive. Empty the recycle bin, delete old files you don’t need any more, uninstall unused programs, run a registry cleaner if you’re into that sort of thing, and generally tidy up. Then, defrag the hard drive.

Make a complete backup of your system. If you have the necessary software, create an image (in other words, an exact snapshot saved to a file) of your entire hard drive(s). If not, use Windows’ own backup software to create a complete backup. At the very least, save off your important data files to removable media. You must do this. Should something go awry and you lose the contents of the drive, you will regret it if you don’t back everything up.

Remember Your Activations!

If you have applications that require activation, those may be tied to some portion of your existing motherboard. The most obvious of these is Windows itself. However, a number of other applications, including some games and Adobe applications, may also require activations.

The best thing to do is to deactivate and uninstall these apps. This is particularly true for Adobe apps. You can then reinstall and reactivate as needed after your motherboard upgrade is done. Of course, you’ll also want the correct CD key or serial numbers for those apps. In the case of Windows, you may not be able to activate over the Internet, but will need to talk to a live human through the Windows activation phone line. We’ve never had a reactivation turned down using this method. Continued…

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